Sunday, July 5, 2009

Sojourner Truth’s original name was Isabella, but, as she herself explained: “When I left the house of bondage I left everything behind. I wasn’t going to keep nothing of Egypt on me, an’ so I went to the Lord an’ asked Him to give me a new name. An’ the Lord game me Sojourner, because I was to travel up and down the land, showing the people their sins an’ being a sign unto them. Afterward I told the Lord I wanted another name, because everybody else had two names, an’ the Lord gave me Truth, because I was to declare the truth to the people.”

From the New York Evening Post, and published in the Cinncinnati Enquirer Newspaper, Saturday, December 8, 1883, Roll 86, page 10, Column 6, Allen County Public Library, microfilm newspaper collection, Fort Wayne, Indiana
“That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud-puddles, or gives me any best place! And ain't I a woman? Look at me! Look at my arm! I have ploughed and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me! And ain't I a woman? I could work as much and eat as much as a man - when I could get it - and bear the lash as well! And ain't I a woman? I have borne thirteen children, and seen most all sold off to slavery, and when I cried out with my mother's grief, none but Jesus heard me! And ain't I a woman?”
“Obliged to you for hearing me, and now old Sojourner ain't got nothing more to say.”
Two quotes from, "Ain't I a Woman?" Sojourner Truth speech at a women’s rights convention in Akron, Ohio, December 1851, from the webpage of Fordham: http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/sojtruth-woman.html
Sojourner Truth's bust in Washington, DChttp://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2009/04/sojourner-truth-becomes-first-female-bust-installed-in-us-capitol-with-help-from-first-lady-michelle.html